


A Case of Mistaken Identity

by Urge



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - High School, High School, Love Letters, Multi, Scent Marking, bonding via lacrosse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:54:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5779513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urge/pseuds/Urge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles thought he was sending love notes to Lydia; turns out that the locker is actually Derek's. Derek really appreciates them.</p><p>Excerpt: </p><p>"Derek opened his locker and found a note on the bottom of the section. “‘Your hair looks particularly luscious today,’” he read off, and grinned, glancing around. He really hoped that sooner or later, Scott’s friend would finally own up to putting them there. He would date the shit out of whoever this was."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and so it begins

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [tumblr prompt/random idea](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/170299) by kirayaykimura. 



> so this is totally from a prompt and a tag chain that i found on tumblr, and all credit for the original idea goes to kirayaykimura and missargent!

If anyone asked Stiles, he would deny to his dying day that he hadn’t originally meant for the notes to go to Derek.

“Scotty, can you see her? Did she get the note? Is she smiling?” he whispered into his phone, as surreptitiously as one could while sprinting across campus to get to gym class after taking a major detour after Chemistry, where Harris had kept him late, because Harris was a hateful ass.

“I told you, dude, she’s just acting like her normal Lydia self. Too good to talk to the plebs, probably able to crush some balls under her Loubitons. Actually, come to think of it, she’ll crush _your_ balls if she finds out that you’ve been slipping her notes every day. What did this one even say?”

“Dammit, Scott, they’re anonymous! And not creepy! Just! Encouraging!” Stiles said, giving up all pretense of whispering. A girl looked at him from her place atop a picnic able, and Stiles shot her a quick handgun-slash-wink combo, making her grin, and hopefully forgetting what he had said. “And if you must know, I _said,_ ‘you have the grace of swan, and you are beautiful, majestic, and unflawed.’”

“Someone could probably give you a restraining order over this, Stiles,” Scott said slowly. “Hold on, someone’s-”

“Hey, McCall, think fast!” Stiles hears over his earpiece, listening to the muffled _slock_ that implies that Scott did, indeed, think fast and not just beam it in the nose like he did that one time at camp. “Good catch, man; keep the orange and enjoy. How’s everything? Lacrosse is starting up soon, right? I was thinking about maybe trying for the team, this year. I didn’t play basketball this year, and I kind of missed the team spirit.”

Stiles can hear Scott sputtering, struggling to form a coherent response to Derek Hale, the most popular boy in school, equally blessed with charisma, looks, smarts and athletic prowess. The man was a god, and deigning to talk to Scott, a lowly junior? Well, it was practically unheard of, especially for him to know his name. Apparently, this was also what Scott mentally fixed on. “You know my name?” he finally got out, voice muffled through his pocket, Stiles assumed. “You don’t talk to _anyone,_ man, how do you know me?!”

Derek pauses, then clears his throat. “I have approximate knowledge of many things, Scoot McCool.”

“Oh my god. You know about that.”

“Scott, your face was a meme pasted around the school for an entire month my sophomore year. Of course I know. Everyone knows.”

Silently, Stiles is freaking out because that prank really wasn’t meant to get so out of hand, but people had started making variations of the poster, and it took off. He’s pretty sure it was going to be in their senior yearbook somewhere, but that’s – _that’s besides the point!_ he mentally yells at himself. _Derek! Is talking to Scott!_ It was a miracle – Derek had stopped playing ball after his girlfriend had died in a tragic mountain lion accident, and after an attempted arson on his house, and he hadn’t talked to anyone outside of his family, Erica, Boyd, and Isaac since. Him talking to Scott would instantly boost him to stratospheric levels of cool, for little reason beyond the fact that the most aloof person in school had talked to him. Also, wait, had he quoted Adventure Time at Scott? This was a singular experience.

The bell rang, and Stiles groaned. He was late for class, Derek had distracted Scott from watching Lydia, and now he would never know how she reacted. He was gonna have to keep this up. He wouldn’t admit defeat until she smiled at one of his notes.

To be perfectly honest, he just wanted her to smile.

\--

 

Derek had been having a perfectly shitty day before the note, to be honest. Laura had taken the keys of the Camaro back with her to college, _seven hours away, thank you Laura,_ so he had to figure out how to hotwire Peter's old car that was kept rusting under a shed in the back - go figure, those keys were "mysteriously lost," as said by a smirking Peter, the dick - to get to school on time, and to top off the ruination that was the morning, Cora stole his toaster strudel _that he had decorated himself_ and first period was dissections, which both hurt his nose and his sensibilities.

For a werewolf, you think that he’d be more used to seeing the insides of little fluffy animals, but dissections whacked him out.

He had gone, fuming, to his locker, to grab the orange he had left in his locker yesterday and to switch out some books. When he had finally spun the right combinations (it took him five tries; like his day wasn’t already bad enough?) something fluttered out and landed at his feet. He stared at it, and finally bent down to grab it. As he read it, he could feel his eyebrows doing something spectacularly complicated. This note was… well, it was possibly the sweetest thing anyone had done for him since Paige. It was a compliment – no numbers, no hints, nothing requiring a response, just a no-strings-attached pick-me-up in his locker. He looked around the hallway, straining his ears for conversations, trying to parse out who had written the note. Finally, he caught the tail end of the note, being repeated through the tinny speaker of a phone. As he zeroed in on who it was, he grinned. There was no way that Scott McCall had been the one to give him the note – while the kid was nice, he wasn’t the brightest penny at the bank, and he wouldn’t be able to put together a note like this unless it was for Allison Argent, his attached at the mouth girlfriend.

He weighed the orange in his hand and nodded decisively, after glancing between it and Scott’s phone. “Hey, McCall, think fast!” he yelled, and whipped the orange towards Scott as soon as he had turned to face him. Scott’s face showed his panic as he quickly stowed his phone in his pocked with one hand and grabbed the orange right before it smacked him in the nose. He could practically feel Scott’s confusion, as he stared at the orange in his hand, and turned to Derek. Derek kept talking, plowing over any questions that he might have had. “Good catch, man; keep the orange and enjoy. How’s everything? Lacrosse is starting up soon, right? I was thinking about maybe trying for the team, this year. I didn’t play basketball this year, and I kind of missed the team spirit.”

Scott’s jaw dropped practically to his knees, and he started making a series of questionable noises. “You know my name? You don’t talk to _anyone,_ man, how do you know me?!”

Derek’s face twitches a little, collecting his thoughts. Finally, he clears his throat. “I have approximate knowledge of many things, Scoot McCool.”

“Oh my god. You know about that.” Scott was steadily turning further and further red, eyes darting around the hallway, hoping that no one was listening to him flounder in front of, arguably, the most popular guy in school.

“Scott, your face was a meme pasted around the school for an entire month my sophomore year. Of course I know. Everyone knows.” He rolled his eyes, but puts on a little smile for Scott’s benefit.

The bell rang, signaling the herds of kids to move towards their classrooms to second period. “So, Scott, what were you talking-”

“Derek, I’m so sorry, but if I’m late to Harris’ class again, he swore he’d fail me, and I really can’t afford that. I’ve gotta go, so I guess I’ll see you at lacrosse tryouts?” he asked as he backed away. When Derek nodded, he grinned, lopsided as ever but twice as earnest. “Great, dude! See ya!”

Derek watched his retreating back, and made a mental note to watch out for Scott McCall. He was a nice kid with… interesting friends, he mused, staring at the note in his hands.


	2. lacrosse practice goes well

It was the second week in a row that Stiles had dropped a note into Lydia’s locker (every day during the week, thank you), and Scott was still reporting no change in attitude after she visited. He had varied times, locker slats, and even stationary, and still, not as much as a chuckle. Apparently, though, some sort of happy gas was in Derek Hale’s lunchbox, because in their shared AP Spanish class, he couldn’t stop grinning. He raised his hand for almost every third question, and would actually participate in discussions, which was far more than he had been doing for months previous. Which, Stiles supposed, was completely understandable, as someone had tried to burn his family alive, and it was only the fact that Cora had been in the woods with Liam that anyone was alive.

He was the same in their other shared class, AP Calculus BC, helping students who didn’t understand concepts without anyone even having to ask the teacher for assistance. It was, Stiles found, extremely distracting to try to focus on derivatives when some evil being decided to sit Derek Hale in the seat in front of him, tell him to offer his help whenever Stiles so much as groaned in the back of your throat, and then have him lean over the back of his chair and place his (really nice-smelling, like seriously, this guy must use Herbal Essences or some shit) head right next to Stiles’, smiling whenever Stiles got a concept.

It was _awful._ It was _terrible._ It was _giving Stiles confused boners about people of both genders._ Stiles hadn’t thought of anything except broad shoulders and defined chests since this whole ‘nice’ episode started during his Super Special Stiles Fun Alone Time, and it was getting really weird, considering he hadn’t even known he was into dudes before… well, before the unfairness that was a smiling Derek Hale started!

Derek tapped on his paper, and he ripped his eyes away from his slightly-stubbled jawline to look back at Derek’s face. “Yee-ee-eess?” he finally asked, when Derek didn’t say anything. “What’s up?”

“Um,” Derek started, and then paused. “Um, I wanted to know if you’d like to study together for Spanish.”

“Uh, yeah, I think that would be good. When do you wanna meet up? I have lacrosse conditioning after school, and Scott said you were going to try out for the team. Do you wanna come with me?”

Derek grinned. “Sure,” he said, turning around, and running his hand through his hair. It looked really good – shiny and bouncy. Hm. He hadn’t put a note in Lydia’s locker today, maybe he’d make it something about her hair.

 

\--

 

Derek opened his locker and found a note on the bottom of the section. “‘Your hair looks particularly luscious today,’” he read off, and grinned, glancing around. He really hoped that sooner or later, Scott’s friend would finally own up to putting them there. He would date the _shit_ out of whoever this was.

He shouldered his backpack after stowing the books he didn’t need that night, and grabbed his gym bag. He was, oddly enough, really excited for lacrosse practice, really excited to just be back on a team. He had missed having friends and that sense of camaraderie. And Isaac and Boyd both played lacrosse, so he’d get to hang out with them during practice. Stiles swung around the corner as Derek was making his way towards the field, and flailed-slash-waved at him. “Hey, dude, you ready to go?”

Derek nodded, and strode towards him. “So long as you don’t smack me in the face with that lacrosse stick, I am.”

Stiles blushed. “Sorry, I kind of forgot it was there.”

“Stiles, you’re holding it.”

“Forgot?”

Derek threw his head back and laughed. Stiles, for his part, couldn’t stop staring. This was unfair, beyond unfair, if he was being honest, but what was he supposed to say to Derek? ‘You’ve gotta stop being so cute because if you don’t I’m really gonna have to start questioning my sexuality and that’s not fair at all’ wasn’t exactly the best thing to break to a dude who wanted to join the sports team that you played on; in fact, it was exactly the right way to scare people off. So instead, Stiles cleared his throat, and threw his head to one side. “C’mon, dude, we can’t be late to practice.”

Derek stopped laughing and opened his eyes to see the long, pale column of Stiles’ throat thrown bare to the world. Wow, that was... an unexpected feeling. And the smell that Stiles was giving off was just… positively delightful. Smelled like raspberry and rosemary and blood orange, which usually, would be a little overwhelming, but coming from him, it just smelled right. He finally shook his head, and bumped into Stiles’ shoulder. “What, you gonna let me be late for my first practice? Lead the way, Stilinski,” he said lowly.

Stiles jumped when he bumped him, but smiled nonetheless. “All right, just don’t loose me in this crazy crowd,” he joked, gesturing at the nearly-abandoned hallway.

 

\--

 

Finstock had been beyond overjoyed to take Derek into the lacrosse fold, rejoicing that ‘another _actual_ athlete is going to be on our team! We might have a chance this year! Greenburg, take note!’ He had thrown Derek into midfield, telling him that they needed guys who could run with any sort of coordination, and it had actually been a good fit. He and Jackson were a prime team, and with Jackson on attack and Derek on midfield, they were unstoppable. The biggest surprise that Derek had was how good Stiles was – he could run almost like he was supernatural himself, and never seemed to get tired. Scott had to hang up on offense due to his asthma, but had deadly accuracy, and overall, the team didn’t seem completely inept.

He told Finstock as much after practice. “You know, Coach, I don’t know if you’re giving your team enough credit. You’ve got a really solid crew without me.”

“Yeah, but now we have you, and you’re never getting away,” Finstock replied without looking up from his clipboard, pen clenched between his teeth.

Derek blinked. “Oh… kay,” he muttered, and backed away. He jumped when someone clapped a hand on his shoulder, and whipped around to face them.

The smiling face of Scott beamed back at him. “You’ll get used to his brand of crazy. It’s not particularly harmful, so we tend to embrace it. Don’t stress. But you did really well for your first time! Your reflexes are crazy good; I think even Jackson was impressed.”

Jackson scoffed from across the bench.

“Okay, he was impressed, but he’ll never admit it, because that would mean admitting someone else is better than he is. Anyways – we’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

Derek glanced at the guys on the team, eyes locking with Stiles, who was straddling the bench and unwinding the tape from his wrists. “Yeah, of course I’ll be here.” Stiles smiled, then looked back down at his handiwork. “Looking forward to it.”

 


	3. unintentional cockblock is unintentional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which derek does some wolfy pain-drains and stiles is a lax god

So Stiles had been basically dead stuck on the next note for Lydia until right before last period, when he and Derek had been in AP Spanish, and he came up with a supremely beautiful response to a question that had everyone else stumped. It made Stiles’ jaw drop – he had the best accent in the world, it was like he had some sort of living experience with a Spanish-speaking family, and if that was the case, then Stiles would eat his foot, because the Hales never left each other – anyways, it stunned Stiles into remembering how Lydia had literally refused to answer a question in Physics the other day. Stiles sat a row behind and a seat to the left of her, and could see her paper, and he had realized that she had the entire damn problem set already worked out. He knew she was smart, objectively, she had trampled everyone except him in middle and elementary schools, but he hadn’t realized that she was smart enough that she was doing _multivariable calculus for fun_ in the margins of her physics work.

And the worst part was that she refused to admit to it on the basis that it might make her look less cool, or something equally as dumb.

So he decided to take a cue from Derek, the little Spanish nerd he was, and tell her to get her act together. You know, in nicer terms.

 

\--

 

Derek’s locker, once again, had a note inside of it. It was niggling at him whenever he would find one of these, because the smell on them was so brief that it couldn’t be really coded – they were written at school, fast, fast enough that no residual scent was left for Derek to track the little shit with. He wouldn’t usually use that term, but the kid wasn’t giving him enough to go off of to really figure out who they’re from, and even if they’re shy – don’t most secret admirers at least leave clues? Like, really, what was he supposed to do, stare at the notes that he most definitely did not keep in a basket at the top of his locker until out of them emerged a perpetrator? Stake out his locker?

Actually, wait, the second one was doable – no, Derek, you’ve gotta go to class, your teachers finally think you’re normal again, you can’t just bail like that. Get it together.

 _‘You should raise your hand more in class because you’re absolutely brilliant and everyone should know it, even if I already do,’_ it read. Derek blushed, and then paused. Wait, if the note was talking about someone knowing he was smart – didn’t it stand to reason that he shared a class with them?

“Jinkies, it looks like we have a mystery on our hands, gang,” he whispered to himself, beaming down at the note. At least he could slim it down a little bit with the itty bitty morsel of information The Subject had given him.

Yes, he had given the person a codename. Get over it. He was Alpha Wolf, so get off his back.

 

\--

 

Practice was interesting that day. Derek seemed strangely invigorated, and it sped up the team as a whole. Boyd and Isaac were running at what felt like three times any speed possible for Stiles to keep up with, and the rest of the team was running like a well-oiled machine.

“Bilinski!” Coach bellowed. “You’re on lead middie, lightning child!”

“Coach, I haven’t had frosted tips since the middle of my sophomore year! Let it go already!”

“They glowed in the dark, Bilinski! I’ll let it go when I can forget about coming back on the bus at midnight and thinking we had a damn alien invasion!”

“… that’s fair.”

Stiles ran forward, easily checking Greenburg (how had he even gotten the ball in the first place? What a fluke) and grabbing the ball away from him, running through the midfield defense with a surprising amount of ease. He mentally thanked the hours he had been logging running through the preserve lately, noting that avoiding the tree roots that had given him many a scar over the years had finally given him the agility to avoid falling flat on his face. He felt pretty good until he hit Isaac stopped at middie defense.

“YOU THREW OFF MY GROOVE, MAN!” he screamed at Isaac, which seemed to stop him as effectively as a brick wall. Which is to say, he stopped moving, and started laughing, which probably isn’t actually the reaction most people have to running into a brick wall, but Stiles takes what he gets. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that. He kept running towards the goal, noting Boyd in the corner of his eye, and resigned himself to a helluva body check, when he had an idea. What if…

Boyd kept charging at him, and Stiles faked a high dodge, then slid neatly around Boyd as he went in for the hard push into his side, and spun to wind up on his shot on goal. Danny looked an even mix of impressed and annoyed when it swished past his stick.

“Become one with the jellyfish, my man,” he said to Boyd as he offered him a hand up. “You okay? It looked like you were really looking to kill me there. Or at least, like, seriously maim.”

Boyd nodded, and clapped an extremely large and strong hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “You play like that, we might just win the championships this year.” He leaned in. “You’d better play like that.”

Stiles grinned, and nodded. Coach blew the whistle from the sidelines, and yelled at them to get ‘their sweaty asses back to the bench before Greenburg vomits,’ to quote ever-eloquent Coach.

“I have no complaints. All of you should have a good weekend, because this is the last real weekend you will have, because our first game is an away game next Friday night, which means we’re crashing there, because it’s literally seven hours away. I wanna know who plans these games, because they’re terrible, and they should be locked up. Seven hours? Who does that? I mean…” Finstock trailed off as he wandered away from the team, probably into his office in the locker room to come up with increasingly evil names for plays, and increasingly evil plays.

Danny slid up next to Stiles. “When did you get so good, Stiles? It seems just like yesterday that you tripped into my lap at lunch,” he smirked.

“Get your head on straight, Danny, it was last month,” he retorted. “I’m not that desperate for your attention that I do it more than once a semester.”

“So that does mean you want my attention, huh?” Danny’s smirk grew, and he leaned in towards Stiles a little bit, just enough to make his heart beat a little faster, and his cheeks to get ever-so-slightly pink.

“Psh, no. You know you just wanted me in your lap, and were more than welcoming once I was there.” Stiles was determined not to drop the ball on this. It was his first time flirting with someone of the same sex, first time that someone so hot was responding so positively. Even if Danny was just joking, it would be a hugely educational experience for him.

“And if I did?”

Stiles dropped the lacrosse bag he had been picking up in his surprise, jarring his shoulder and making him hiss. “Ow, ow, oh shit, I really can’t deal with this right now.”

“What happened?” Derek’s voice sounded behind him, making him jump and, yep, move his probably-dislocated shoulder again.

“I think I dislocated my shoulder. I took a hit from a certain blonde douche captain last year and landed hard on it, and it’s been a little tetchy since then. I try not to do sudden loads” yay double entendre! “but every once and a while, I forget and mess it up.”

“I can fix it,” Derek responds, coming around Stiles to stand on his left side, where his arm was hanging loosely at his side. “This might hurt.”

Strangely enough, the second that Derek put his hands on the joint, it stopped hurting. It was like Novocain but better, and he didn’t realize that he had fixed his arm until Derek tapped his shoulder lightly with his knuckles. “Ice it tonight, and take it easy on it for the next few days. Don’t wanna aggravate the injury.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Danny asked, staring at Stiles’ shoulder. “He didn’t even flinch when you put it back in, it was like he couldn’t even feel it.”

Derek shrugged. “I have a lot of younger kids in my family, cousins and siblings and all. I’m used to fixing people when they get a little messed up, I guess.”

Stiles tentatively went to pick up his bag, but was stopped by Derek’s broad hand against his shoulder. “No way, man,” he tried to protest.

“I’m taking this to your Jeep, and I’m gonna help you get this wrapped,” he nodded to his shoulder, “and then I’m gonna go home. You can’t lift this with just one arm, and even if it doesn’t hurt now, it’s gonna be a little bitch in a few hours. C’mon, let’s go, Scott’s already making out with Allison over by the bleachers. He won’t pull his head out of the clouds for a few hours. Just text him.”

Stiles resigned himself to his fate. There were worse ways to leave practice, he supposed. He waved to Danny as he walked away, noting that his trademark smile was a little dimmer than it had been before, when they were flirting.

Note to self: hurting yourself when someone tells you they want you in their lap? _Definite_ boner-killer.

 

\--

 

Derek wasn’t really sure why he had helped Stiles, just that it was something in his gut urging him to take some of his pain. Easy enough.

And then he had to open his mouth and tell him he was helping him get home. Which, instinctually, he knew was way rude, but like, what was he supposed to do? It was too late to rescind the offer. And so he was going to Stiles’ house.

This could go either very, very badly, or very, very well.


	4. I'm getting feelings - IN MY PANts and my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK WITH AN EXTRA LONG CHAPTER THIS TIME SORRY GUYS DONT HATE ME ENJOY

Derek nudged Stiles towards the Jeep when he started veering towards the Camaro. “Nope, I’m gonna drive your car home and then come back for mine. You probably won’t be willing to drive for the next few days, so I want it somewhere where kids won’t mess with it. I mean, have you ever seen Jackson’s car after his away matches for swimming? Absolutely trashed.” He paused. “I mean, not like he doesn’t deserve it, but still.”

Stiles coughed, flushing. “Um, that. That won’t happen to my Jeep.”

“And why not? They’re not gonna skip you because you’re the son of the sheriff. There aren’t any cameras in the parking lot, so they won’t get busted.”

“Ha, well, it might be. It might be because Scott and me – well, we might have had something to do with all the times Jackson has come back to his car windshield blacked out with the day-glo penis. Among others.”

Derek barked out a laugh. “I had forgotten about that one! But why-?”

“Uh, because he’s a douche who takes out his anger on those of us who can’t retaliate because we’re physically and socially weaker? And this was a foolproof way to non-permanently get back at him. We never do anything that’s not easily fixable. The worst thing we ever did was take his wheels off his car and put it on cinderblocks, and we even left a wrench on top of the car.”

“Didn’t you hide the nuts, though?”

“Hey man, we aren’t saints. And they were just in the cup holder. Unlocking the car was almost insultingly easy. You pick the trunk lock, open the thing in the armrest, reach through and unlock a door. Simple.”

“It’s frightening, how much you’ve thought through this.”

“Considering we did it, we had to think through the logistics.” Stiles looked away from Derek’s (stunningly beautiful) smiling face to find that they were standing in front of his car. “Oh, okay. Um, my key is in my lax bag, so if you’ll just let me-”

Derek put a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, effectively stopping him in place. “No. I’ve got it.” With his other hand, he deftly unzipped the bag and grabbed his keys, spinning them on one finger before sliding them seamlessly into the lock. He opened the door and leaned in, reaching across to put the bag in the backseat and unlock the other door. Stiles had a momentarily perfect view of his ass, and tried to savor the moment, but startled when Derek turned around, nostrils flaring and eyes intense.

Stiles laughed, a little jolted by how much the eye thing was totally doing it for him, and let his eyes dart aside. “My own knight in shining armor, complete with fancy tricks. Can you roll over, too? What about fetch? Shake hands?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “You’re mixing your metaphors again, Stiles. Get in the car, I’ve gotta get you some anti-inflammatory meds to keep you from messing it up too much.”

Stiles clambered into the Jeep, knocking his forehead on the frame as he hopped up. He had never quite gotten the hang of graceful entrances, and apparently, the universe saw fit to make him as clumsy in front of hot people of the same gender as it had in front of hot people of the opposite gender. At least Derek didn’t laugh, like Lydia did usually – he just cringed a little bit, and reached out a hand in an aborted attempt to help him out. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right? He pulled the door closed with his good arm, and stared at the buckle.

On the best of days, getting strapped in required two good hands and a large amount of luck. Roscoe was almost as finicky about his seatbelts as he was about… well, everything else. Roscoe was old and needed a lot of work, but Stiles had no job and his dad had cut off his allowance, meager as it was, after his latest prank on Jackson, where he, Scott, and Allison stuck three hundred pinwheels in Jackson’s front yard. It was a beautiful sight that even Allison couldn’t find fault against after he had strung up all of Stiles’ clothes on the flagpole. Juvenile, yes, but also extremely effective, as Jackson hadn’t been able to get out of the driveway (the douche had a gravel driveway, can you believe it?) and enough kids had been fascinated with the sea of pinwheels that Jackson’s extremely small sense of humanity got to him and he had to wait for the kids to take them away instead of just running them over with a lawnmower, as he had originally planned.

Back to the situation at hand (heh. He only had one hand now), Stiles was having trouble fixing his problem. He was using his knee to lever the strap forward, and his good hand to hold the buckle, but it wasn’t really working – it kept getting stuck in the mechanism, and Stiles was just getting more and more frustrated.

“Here, let me,” Derek finally said, leaning over and pressing Stiles back into his seat with a firm (toned, tan, exquisitely warm) shoulder to the sternum. “Laura’s car had the same problem. Never wanted to work right, required a lot of TLC. I think that’s good,” he said, the buckled giving off a satisfying click. He turned the key in the ignition, and Roscoe roared to life, purring under them with few clunks to worry about. He shifted quickly into reverse, the clutch giving easily under his foot, and powered out of the lot.

“This is really nice, dude,” Stiles commented after a few minutes of companionable silence. “Like, I’m surprised you’re doing this for me. Not that you’re not nice, but you’ve gotta have better things to do, like homework, or finding a girl to kiss, or something.”

“Or a guy,” Derek idly commented, not taking his eyes off the road.

“Or a guy,” Stiles slowly agreed, filing this new tidbit of information into the annals of his mind. “But why? Don’t think I didn’t notice you dodging the question. I am the master of dodging questions, and I don’t let other people do it to me, like ever.”

Derek breathed in deeply through his nose, taking in the spiciness that was Stiles after a hard lacrosse practice. Deeper than the sweat, it smelled like walking through a forest after a rain, petrichor and pine and new growth, with allspice mixed in and a chemical off note that made it particularly unique scent. “I don’t know. I’m doing it because you made an effort to include me, I guess. Not a lot of people do that lately, after Paige.”

Stiles frowned. “Well, that’s kind of really lame, because you’re an awesome dude, and people should know that by now. I mean, you’ve been in school with us since the sixth grade, you’d think they could remember that far back. Life changed a little bit for you, but you didn’t stop with it. You just move a different way now.” He paused, thinking deeply. “It changes everyone, whether they can acknowledge it or not.” He stopped talking, biting his lip and staring out of the window. Derek glanced over, worried when Stiles remained silent for a few minutes. It wasn’t like him, but the silence seemed a little more than pensive and farther into the realm of depressive.

Finally, he took a hand off the wheel and placed it on Stiles’ knee. “You okay?” he said quietly, vision flicking between the road and his passenger. Stiles’ face crackled a little – a break in the façade of normalcy he was putting up. What shone through was pure sadness. There was none of the pity that Derek had been expecting.

“I knew Paige, you know,” Stiles finally said, barely above a whisper. “We grew up together, took orchestra together in middle school. I played the only cello in the class and pretended it was an electric guitar. She thought I was ridiculous, she told me as much, but we were friends. I brought her lunch whenever she practiced through it and our lunch periods overlapped. They didn’t, that year you two were together – that’s why I wasn’t ever around. I was taking a lot of AP sciences, and she was in as many advanced music classes as she could be at once without repeating past ones.” Stiles paused. “When I heard she died, man. It was rough. I miss her.” He let out a shuddery breath, and pushed his good hand over his face. “Not as much as you probably do, but. You know. I miss her.”

Derek was visibly trying to keep his composure. This was the most that anyone had spoken about Paige in his presence since she had died, and it was from probably the least expected source. “I know,” he finally rumbled out, sounding a little broken, but mainly just sad. The car puttered to a stop in front of Stiles’ house, and Derek threw the stick into park and rubbed ferociously at his eyes.

“Whoo, wow. That was kind of heavy,” Stiles breathes out, also pushing at his eyes. “Sorry, man.”

Derek rolled his shoulders and let his head loll over to look at Stiles. He let out a short laugh. “Look at the two of us, man. Crying in a Jeep on the side of the road. It’s like we’re in a Lifetime movie or something.”

Stiles barked out a guffaw. “Oh my god, you’re right. Do you wanna finish this heart-to-heart with a manly hug? Or do you wanna walk me to the door for a will-they-won’t-they moment that ends with me unlocking the door and walking inside with an awkward wave with my good hand?”

Derek was about to start laughing for real, if this continued, and he was afraid he might cry again if he let himself let go like that. “Let’s just get you in the door without re-injuring yourself, yeah?”

Stiles grinned. “Sounds like a plan, dude.” Derek reached across and unbuckled Stiles, popping the door open and leaning back. They both hopped out, Derek grabbing the lacrosse bag out of the backseat and handing Stiles the keys out of the ignition. When Stiles got to the door, he unlocked it and turned back to grab his bag. Derek was closer than he had been expecting – looming up into his space, but not in bad way. In fact, in a very welcome way, if the stirring behind his navel was any indication. Wait, no, he was supposed to feel this way for Lydia, not Derek’s perfectly dreamy eyes and cute caterpillar brows. Wait. That didn’t sound right.

Derek took another half step forward, nostrils flaring out almost imperceptibly, head tilted down just a little, looking forward through his lashes. After an awkward pause – _you literally predicted this, Stiles, why the fuck are you so surprised_ – Derek shifted his hand past Stiles’ waist, and pushed open the door. Stiles held back the disappointment he was feeling that the hand hadn’t grabbed his hips instead, and took two needed steps backwards through the threshold and into his house. Derek followed closely, but stopped shorter than he had been earlier. He dropped Stiles’ bag just beyond the door.

“You got any medical wrap here for your arm?” Derek murmured, shifting his gaze from Stiles’ face to his shoulder.

Stiles scoffed. “With me for a son, my dad basically has enough medical supplies to stock a small hospital in the bathroom alone. Come with me, I’ve got some med tape up in my room for my knee; it should hold up for this pretty well.”

Stiles trundled up the stairs and kicked the door open, belatedly praying that nothing incriminating was left on display. After scanning the premises, he grabbed the medical tape off of his desk and dropped onto his bed. “Alright, well, this is gonna suck. Let me just get my shirt off.” He started to struggle with his shirt, promptly getting trapped with one arm stuck above his head and his hurt one around his midsection and helplessly caught up in the material of the jersey. “Help,” he said, muffled from underneath the fabric.

Derek laughed, and quickly maneuvered Stiles out from his cloth prison. “Better?” he asked, once the jersey was off. Stiles noted how close he was, and how he could tell that Derek had inhumanly perfect skin, with just a little stubble that suddenly reminded him that Derek was a senior and so out of his damn league it was ridiculous. If Stiles was even playing for that team. Which he wasn’t? Probably? Well, the Danny IncidentÔ had proven that theory wrong, at least a little, so maybe… maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad idea, after all.

So Derek’s hands were all over Stiles’ bare skin. What could possibly go wrong?

 

\--

 

When Stiles had mentioned the awkward teen movie moment, Derek knew that it was his chance. Derek had known that he had been interested in both guys and girls since he was old enough to recognize what “hot” meant, so being attracted to a guy in and of itself wasn’t a revelation.

The attraction being to Stiles, however, was. Or rather, the fact that he was letting himself see people that way after Paige was. He guessed it was like mourning, losing her – she hadn’t been his true mate or anything like that, but he had loved her. Getting to talk about her with someone else who had lost her – her parents had made it quite clear that they didn’t want to talk about her when they moved away, to a new town where no one knew their names – and his family and friends hadn’t really _known_ her like he had. She was a loner, pretty simply, and long enough after her death, people stopped remembering her, much less being willing to talk with Derek about all of the things that he missed about her. So getting to talk to Stiles about her was cathartic in a way.

But the thing that was getting Derek, now, was that he was getting butterflies around Stiles. And if he was being perfectly honest with himself, he had been feeling butterflies around Stiles for a while, ever since he really got to know him, after talking to Scott that first time.

And he loved the feeling that he was getting. He felt so light, suddenly – not like Paige’s death was erased, or lessened, in any way, but like he was putting that into his foundation, like he was building a life on top of it and learning how to live again.

So when Stiles gave him the opportunity to step up into his space, Derek decided to take it. Truthfully, he was hoping that Stiles would get the hint and kiss him, or something, but he wasn’t holding out for that. Derek instead stepped into his space just a tad bit more to open the door, letting himself take a deep breath to get the citrusy mix that came from Stiles’ skin and unconsciously letting his head drop forward, never breaking eye contact with him, and pausing when his hand was close to Stiles’ waist. God, how he wanted to grab on and not let go, but that wasn’t for here – no, someone would see, and the Sheriff would know, and Derek would be a wanted man for ravaging the Sheriff’s son in public.

Not that he wanted to just ravage Stiles – no, he didn’t want to – oh, who was he kidding, he’d ravage Stiles any day of the week if he gave him the opportunity.

He instead pushed the door open, following Stiles into the house and dropping his bag just beyond the threshold. “You got any medical wrap here for your arm?” he murmured, looking now at Stiles’ shoulder, (regretfully) breaking eye contact. At Stiles’ lead, he followed him back up to his bedroom, and was hit in the face with the scent of _Stiles_ and _happiness_ and – wait, was that – no, yes, that was the smell of come. Derek could smell Stiles’ come. This felt like a major invasion of privacy, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking it all in.

He was understandably distracted when Stiles took his shirt off – so much skin, all on display – but when Stiles asked for help, he jumped to it. If he mainly did it as an excuse to get his hands on Stiles’ skin – well, who could blame him?


	5. UST UST UST UST

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's short but it's something ok

Stiles’ head finally was out of his shirt, and Derek… well, Derek was really close. And his eyes kept darting down to Stiles’ lips, and Stiles was really really really hoping that he’d just bite the bullet and lean in.

After a few seconds of being in each others’ space, with Derek’s hands holding the shirt right behind his neck, arms resting on his bare shoulders. Stiles felt himself slowly flushing under Derek’s scrutiny, and found himself thanking every god that he knew the names of that he had worked out extra this summer. If there was ever a time that you needed to impress a boy, this was it, and the boy was a specimen of ideal maleness. Muscles everywhere, as Stiles had noticed in the locker room after practice. Almost every day. Or, well, tried not to notice, really, but who could blame him? Any male-attracted human being couldn’t stay a saint when confronted with that perfection. Some days, he felt like the dude from Winter Soldier, or even Peggy Carter, when they reached out and touched Chris Evans’ pecs. He just wanted to touch. Just wanted to touch so bad.

Derek finally leaned away, inhaling as he went. (Didn’t Stiles stink after practice? He must have been getting a noseful of teenaged boy sweat.) “So uh. Medical. Medical tape,” he coughed, cheeks reddening (ah, there was the adverse reaction to body odor!) and nose scrunching up in a way that was totally not adorable. Not even a little bit.

Stiles nodded, and gestured to the mirror. “Pull out that mirror, and it’s on the bottom shelf. If you couldn’t tell by the convenient placement, this is far from the first time that I’ve injured myself,” he explained at Derek’s raised eyebrow, shrugging his uninjured shoulder. He wasn’t above admitting his own ineptitude.

Derek chuckled, rolling his eyes while grabbing all the necessary equipment. “You’ve even got a shoulder sling. Do you think you’re prepared for a nuclear apocalypse, yet?”

“Nah, still gotta get my anti-irradiation equipment together. That shipment should be coming in sometime this January, though, so fingers crossed that those buttons stay unpunished.”

At this, Derek let out a more startled laugh. “Always ready with a comeback, huh?”

“Scotty says that it’s my one redeeming feature in conversation.” Stiles grinned at Derek’s small chuckle. He had made the Greek god laugh multiple times in one conversation: score. Derek stepped over, manhandling him until he was turned around and taping across his shoulder.

“Stop flinching,” Derek muttered, “you’re being overdramatic.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You can’t know that, dude,” he whined. “You’re not in my head.”

“Thank God for that,” Derek quipped, “I don’t think that I would be able to survive it.”

“Shut up!” Stiles said, finally noticing that Derek had finished taping his shoulder. “Wait, dude, this is really good. Why are you so good at that?”

“I already told you, my cousins are reckless. Someone’s gotta be able to fix ‘em up, and Uncle Peter just laughs when Vicky tackles her older brother and they both end up with bruises.”

“Sounds vicious,” Stiles said. “Survival of the fittest, I guess.”

“Yeah, so if we’re following that logic, then you’re not gonna survive, huh?”

“Derek! You wound me, sir.”

Derek laughed outright, head falling back and face lighting up. “No, I’m pretty sure that you’re the one wounding yourself.” He gently shoved at Stiles, pushing him only a few inches. Damn, if Stilinski wasn’t built. (He was. He was so muscly. Those hands were the inspiration for many a wet dream of boys and girls alike.) “C’mon, Stiles, I know that you have to do Spanish work, you may as well talk to me while you’re doing it so you get in that practice, too.”

Stiles groaned exaggeratedly, and slumped over and listed dramatically to one side. “Fffffffine,” he said petulantly. “But you’re in charge of getting the books out. Crippled, remember?”

 

\--

 

Hours later, the door opened onto a scene that the Sheriff had not been expecting: Stiles, in a makeshift sling, draped over the back of the couch in a manner not too different from that of a fainting heroine, speaking Spanish to none other than the Derek Hale that John had been hearing Stiles moan and whine about to Scott for the past two weeks.

Yes, he knew who the Derek was that Stiles was talking about. BHHS wasn’t that big, and Talia was on the city council, and Laura brought muffins to the sheriff’s station every other week for purposes that she swore were not for bribery. John didn’t believe her, not even vaguely, but it got him to know Derek, who always walked in looking a bit cowed but talked to every single deputy John had with a smile on his face. When he heard Stiles talking about a Derek, he knew it could only be one. Besides, he had known that Stiles was… equal opportunity since he was in third grade, when he stormed into their house and declared that he hated and loved both Jackson and Lydia in equal measure. When John had asked for clarification, Stiles told him that he thought that they were both “meany-butts,” but were sometimes nice and every once and a while he wanted to hold their hands. So the boy in his living room wasn’t a revelation. No, the revelation was that Derek Hale was looking at his son like he hung the moon, grin plain on his face as Stiles flailed with one arm, staring at the ceiling like it held the meaning of life. His son was missing it. His son was an idiot.

He cleared his throat, loudly, and Stiles jumped practically a foot into the air, falling off the couch in the process, but catching himself with his good arm. “Dad! You nearly just re-injured me!” he cried from his half-plank inches from the floor.

John scoffed. “You and me both know you perfected falling off that couch nearly a decade ago, kid.” He walked into the living room, hand extended towards Derek in an ostensibly friendly handshake. “I’m Sheriff Stilinski, and you are…?” He was going to make this kid squirm while he could, if only for the stories that could be told at the station after this introduction.  
Derek sprang to his feet from his position deep within their softest recliner. “Derek Hale, Sheriff Stilinski. I was helping Stiles get patched up after he dislocated his shoulder at practice and we decided to practice Spanish after.”

John shook his head. “Stiles, what was it this time?”

“Too many books and too much gear in one bag getting dropped and caught right before it hits the ground makes for one bad thing and a very angry shoulder,” he said matter-of-factly. “Derek, you probably have to leave now, huh? I kept you a while, your mom is probably wondering where you are. Dad, he left his car at the field to drive me home, could you take him?”

Derek paled, and inwardly, John grinned victoriously. He still had that scare factor, after all. “No, I think that I’ll just jog back. It’s no big deal,” he said, edging his way to the door. “Stiles, I’ll see you tomorrow in class?”

“Of course, dude. Well, unless I hurt myself again. In which case, no promises.”

Sheriff Stilinski walked to the door and opened it for Derek. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Hale,” he said in his best ‘I am an interrogator and I will use everything I can against you’ voice. Derek swallowed audibly and nodded, grabbing his jacket and stepping over the threshold.

“It was nice to meet you, sir,” Derek responded from their front stoop. The door closed soundly behind him, and the Sheriff turned to Stiles, who was - ah, there he was. Attempting escape to his room.

Oh well. Stiles would call Scott later that day and tell him all about it, and the walls were thin.


End file.
